Page 50 of Dead Girl Running

Fair enough. She pulled out her phone, went online and typed inMFAA. Lots of World War II history, a brief note of its dissolution in 1946 and an even briefer note on its recent revival.

So it wasn’t a secret agency. It was an underreported agency. Suspiciously underreported.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely. “Are you aware of what’s happening with the world’s treasured historical sites?”

“They’re being looted.” Kellen searched for Jessica Diaz, head of the MFAA.

“More than that. The way it used to work was—local people would search out tombs, archaeological sites, strip them of artifacts and sell them at the market for whatever they could get. The practice supplemented what was usually a poverty-stricken existence, and the pieces of art moved through a chain of resalers to end up on the shelves of wealthy collectors.” He made that all sound like a good thing. “The whole operation was inefficient.” He paused. “How’s the research going?”

“I found Jessica Diaz, first head of the MFAA, but information gives only her date of death in the line of duty.” A pretty Hispanic woman, thirty years old, soft-looking and smiling.

He nodded. “Keep researching.”

Kellen typed inWho is Jessica Diaz’s MFAA successor?

He continued, “Terrorist groups realized what a gold mine—sometimes literally—the antiquities trade could be. They could fund their armies with the money they made stripping every historical site of every ancient piece of art, literature and relic. The previously random looting became organized. The locals were either pushed out or conscripted and forced to find valuable artifacts and hand them over to the terrorists.”

Google showed no answer to her question, nothing but the usual hodgepodge of internet weirdness. “You, um, don’t seem to be a member of the MFAA.”

“I didn’t choose to post my unfortunate promotion. That would be stupid, wouldn’t it?”

It would. But she didn’t have to admit it out loud.

“Search for the Brooks family of Charleston, South Carolina,” he said. “I’ll come up.”

She did as he suggested and found an old and formidable dynasty—and there he was, part of a family shot that included an elderly matriarch, a nervous-looking mother, six languid uncles, no father and enough cousins to populate a small island. Which apparently they did and had for generations among varying amounts of scandal.

Kellen flicked a glance at Nils’s photo and then at his face.

NILS BROOKS:

MALE, 30S, 6’, 180 LBS., BROWN HAIR (BLOND ROOTS?), BROWN EYES (COMPELLING), LONG LASHES, MILITARY HAIRCUT. NARROW JAW. DARK-RIMMED GLASSES (USED AS DISGUISE).CUTE.HANDSOME.NERDY.CONFIDENT. CLOTHING: EXPENSIVE, WELL-WORN. MEMBER OF SOUTH CAROLINA’S DISTINGUISHED BROOKS DYNASTY. GRADUATE OF DUKE UNIVERSITY. LEADER OF NEWLY RE-FORMED MFAA (AS REPORTED BY HIM).

Perhaps her background made her too suspicious.

Maybe she was smart to be suspicious. Her first impression of Nils Brooks had proved to be massively inaccurate. He had set out to deceive, and he had succeeded. In so many ways, he reminded her of Gregory… “You’re saying the terrorists don’t care how they achieve their goals or who or what is hurt in the process.”

“Terrorists are terrorists. They want the world to go up in flames, and they don’t care how it comes about.”

“As long as their cause is the winner.”

“Of course.”

“What you’re telling me is interesting. Fishy, but interesting. But the job of the MFAA in World War II was to—” she looked at her screen and read “‘—to safeguard historic and cultural monuments from war damage, and as the conflict came to a close, to find and return works of art and other items of cultural importance that had been stolen by the Nazis or hidden for safekeeping.’ I can’t believe the MFAA in its current inception will be terrorist fighters.”

“Reopening the MFAA was our idea, Jessica’s and mine. The declared intention of the agency is to interrupt the flow of cash. That’s the only reason we were able to convince the Feds to green-light the restoration of the agency.”

Good, succinct, sensible answer. She wanted good, succinct, sensible answers, because everything she’d looked up so far checked out. But was it possible to manipulate the internet, to make everything conveniently fit? Of course it was. Lies were made truth all the time. The MFAA website was a dot-gov website, so maybe that made it supervised?

Yes, by someone in the US government.

She was so right not to trust this information.

Nils continued, “No one else in the government thought to go at the problem of terrorist funding, but I did.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’m an art major.”

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